


Gambling

by Flufferdoodle



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Gambling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Mount Silver, Therapy, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25103413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flufferdoodle/pseuds/Flufferdoodle
Summary: Blue has a problem.
Relationships: Ookido Green | Blue Oak/Red
Comments: 2
Kudos: 63





	Gambling

Blue tried his best to give Red space. Red had to move on with his life, after all, and just because they lived together and started dating didn’t mean that Red wanted to be coddled by Blue 24/7, even if it would make Blue feel more at ease.

It wasn’t that Blue thought Red would run off to another mountain and disappear for another five years, even though he very well could, or that he thought Red would get eaten alive by the press again, even though it had nearly happened when he first descended, or that he thought that Red would find someone worthier of his time and space than Blue, even though that was an extremely real possibility considering Blue sucked.

It was just that, well, Blue kind of worried about him. A lot. All the time. More than he should.

And really, who wouldn’t do the same in his shoes? He’d been through a lot. He and Red both lived out more than a lifetime in their year on a Pokémon journey and seen and done more horrifying things than the majority of the population.

Worrying was normal. Healthy. It meant that something in him still was capable of caring and loving and being. For the first two years Red had been missing and Blue unable to find him, Blue had thought he was no longer capable of feeling such things. The day Red was found had woken him up some, and he’d been able to accept the position as the Viridian Gym Leader and start fixing his mess of a life.

He had worried then, too, but it was a dull worry. Stagnant. Patient.

Red’s return woke up a whole slew of new worries. Where before he felt the constant drone of “how will Red survive in a storm if Charizard faints” and “what if he starves to death this winter,” each day of having Red home had awoken some new fear in Blue.

First, the terror of his feelings, now identified with the (unwanted) help of Misty, Brock, Daisy, Bill, Leaf, Gold, Lyra, Silver, his grandfather, Lance, Erika, Blaine, Koga, and whoever else Blue happened to see within a month of Red’s return. He still wasn’t entirely sure _why_ they all felt the need to give their two cents on Blue’s pitiful crush. He certainly didn’t need it. He would’ve told Red eventually, or Red would’ve told him. Somehow. Probably. But that was over now. They figured it out.

Second, the terror of Red’s new life. Red had spent every single day for five years sitting on top of a mountain training. Every now and then, Blue or Gold or Lyra would trek up to visit and battle and make him eat a real meal, but Red didn’t belong to society. He existed outside of it. So Blue had, understandably, worried about Red adapting to the real world once more. Would he get a job? Would he take his rightful place as Champion? How would he, still not yet an adult, take on the awesome responsibility of running a region? That would be a disaster.

In the end, thankfully, Red had reached out to Blue’s grandfather and continued his work on completing the Pokédex. He journeyed through Kanto and Johto, and would likely soon be leaving for Hoenn or Sinnoh or something.

That, of course, brought up the third terror: Red leaving the region. What would Blue even do then? Blue had lived without Red for so long, but now that he had him back and things were finally _right_ he couldn’t handle the thought of losing him again. Would Blue quit his job as gym leader and abandon everything he’d built for the past five years to follow Red again?

He liked to think he wouldn’t, but (not very) deep down he knew he would.

Those were the big worries. The hardest ones that Blue either already addressed or would have to soon. Other worries came in the form of trying to figure out what cereal Red liked best or figuring out how to tell him to do his own laundry. Each one weighed down on Blue a lot more than it probably should, but, again. Blue had his reasons for worrying. It was normal. He clung to his worry like he clung to his love: it meant he was alive and feeling.

It also maybe meant he should go to therapy, because, as Daisy pointed out many times, clinging to worry like a security blanket didn’t exactly sound healthy.

But that was beside the point.

The _point_ , Blue knew, was Red. And his new worry about Red.

A worry, just like so many others, Blue had no possible way to prepare himself for.

Of course, it was Blue’s fault for developing the worry in the first place, not Red’s, because if Blue had just given him the space he deserved Blue wouldn’t even know about it. But Blue _should_ know about it, right? They were dating.

But they still had separate finances and lives and whatever else and Red would tell him when he was ready.

Blue didn’t mean to find out, either. It actually started because of Bill. Blue didn’t _ask_ Bill; Bill _told_ Blue, so Blue wasn’t encroaching on Red’s space, right? He didn’t mean to know.

But he knew, and he was worried.

As always.

Blue made a mental note to call Daisy about getting a therapist.

That was beside the point.

The point was Red was gambling. A lot.

**-line break-**

Red didn’t expect to ever go back to the Celadon Game Corner. Sure, he’d played the slots some when he was ten and had found himself entranced with the spinning slides and the almost straight 7s, but after discovering the horrors of the Rocket lab underneath he thought he had wiped his hands clean of the place.

It’s not that the memories of Team Rocket haunted him too much anymore. They would never be pleasant, but he had learned to live with them. Moving on from Giovanni’s piercing, empty gaze and the cries of a fuzzy Marowak sprite had taken time, but that’s what the mountain was for. Climb it and repent. Climb it and move on.

He had originally wanted to forget it all. Looking at the fresh snow before him, the wind biting into his thin skin straight to his bones, Red thought he would erase Blue’s screaming Raticate from his mind and the tortured creature in Cerulean Cave.

Forgetting that, though, would mean forgetting so much more. How could he scorch the thought of the Rockets creeping behind him in the middle of Mount Moon without burning the memory of Clefairy dancing in the night? How could he scrape out that horrible day he won the title of Champion without prying out the very thought of his team that had worked so hard to put him there?

How could he forget the worst of his journey without the best?

Even worse were the thoughts of Blue. Red wanted so badly to remove him from his soul, from the very core of his being that Blue had managed to crawl his way into. The day Red reached the top of Mount Silver, he wanted Blue gone. But at the same time, Red didn’t.

Blue pulled Red forward. Always.

Blue climbed through hell and waited there just to remind Red he was still there. Always a step ahead, full of passion and ambition that Red could never show, Blue dragged Red forward and fed him his dreams. Even on the Indigo Plateau, when Red feared he had destroyed everything, Blue still pulled him forward. Blue was snarky, but never hateful.

If Blue hated Red, he wouldn’t have waited. If Blue hated Red, he wouldn’t have bothered. If Blue hated Red, Red would never have been champion.

With the maturity and grace of broken, angry, ten-year-old boys, the two of them changed the world as the closest of friends without once admitting how much they needed each other.

Blue would hint at it _so much_ , never fully saying it, trying to twist it into the stories of rivals and not of friends, and Red would just use those words as a reason to beat him.

They were so stupid.

So angry and stupid.

Red didn’t know how they ever accomplished anything.

On the mountain, Red often wondered if everything was worth the price they paid. The what-ifs and could’ve-beens felt overwhelming at first. Would Lance have eventually addressed Team Rocket? Would Blue have been happy if Red had let him win?

Letting go and accepting the world as it existed was hard.

But Red did it.

And now here he was, standing in the Celadon Game Corner, feeling nothing for it. He checked the back poster for the switch and the staircase out of obligation more than curiosity, and felt no disappoint nor relief to find it had been sealed off.

It was just a place.

And Red was just another patron, gambling away little coins decorated with Clefairy in the hopes of winning big and acquiring a Porygon.

He had considered just buying his way in, but he was still dependent on Blue for money and $200,000 was a bit steep to ask of someone for a single Pokémon.

Red had found a way with the machines, to some extent. He had more than tripled the 300 coins he’d started with since he’d started playing a week. More on the days when he was tired and his morals loose and Pikachu bored. His faithful partner was more than capable of zapping the machines at just the right time to line things up.

Of course, if he did it too much, then the workers would notice and he’d be escorted out. He didn’t have a good other method of getting a Porygon either that didn’t involve travelling to a different region and participating in some sketchy black markets.

He’d considered just stealing the damn creature, but he hated the press enough as is and getting arrested for Pokémon theft wouldn’t exactly send a good message to all the young trainers who looked up to him.

So he was doing it the hard way.

Well, not so much hard as _boring._ Which, he assumed, should be hilariously ironic seeing as he had zero problem with the nearly two thousand days he spent on Mount Silver, each nearly identical.

Red could see the addictive quality in gambling, but he just didn’t feel it. He _could_ feel the crick in his neck from looking down at the screen and the static in his foot from falling asleep, however.

He wanted so badly to just get this over with. Red glanced up at the clock.

It was four o’clock, which meant eight hours until the Game Corner closed, but two hours until Blue came home from the gym. It was a Thursday, which meant Blue wouldn’t feel like cooking, which meant he’d get takeout if Red didn’t make something.

Red didn’t feel like cooking, either, so takeout was a better option.

Which meant he wouldn’t need to be home until 6:30 so he could pick a meal with Blue by 7 and they could be eating by 7:30.

If Blue had challengers today, he’d go straight to bed. He’d complain if Red didn’t immediately join him, but not too much since he’d pass out within minutes, so Red would be free to fly back to Celadon and get at least three more hours of slots in, meaning he had about five hours total left of slots today.

Unless if Red wanted to join Blue in bed, which he did, even if Blue fell asleep immediately. Because Red loved Blue, and that was the whole point.

Red looked at his coin case. 1000 coins down, 9000 more to go. The poster of the Pokémon prizes – Dratini, Scyther, and Porygon – seemed to stare at Red.

Pikachu cooed into his ear, cheeks sparking.

Red hated gambling.

**-line break-**

Blue wondered how to bring it up with Red or if he even should. It was Red’s life, after all, and Red was free to live it how he chose.

But people didn’t just let their significant others participate in self destructive behaviors, right?

But Blue let him sit on top of a freezing cold mountain with nothing but jeans and a t-shirt for five years. Was that more self-destructive than gambling?

That was different, though. That was a whole different ball game. Spending years in some weird self-punishing inner-peace-seeking isolation made sense for Red because Red’s entire life was some weird self-punishing inner-peace-seeking journey from the time Red picked up Charmander’s Pokéball and called himself a trainer. He was basically the protagonist of some novel, honestly. The bizarre made sense for Red because Red was bizarre.

But gambling?

Gambling was _normal_. Gambling was a problem normal people struggled with. Red gambling made about as much sense as Red smoking or dieting or buying into a pyramid scheme.

Maybe this was all part of the problem, though. Red was still a normal person with normal person instincts somewhere, and Blue trying to put him on a pedestal and pretend that he was some other-worldly being was just going to create more problems in the long run.

Normal people didn’t spend five years in isolation on top of a mountain and then start dating the person who tormented them throughout all of their childhood, though.

Blue often worried that Red was dating him out of some screwed up sense of guilt or obligation or Stockholm syndrome or something, because Blue definitely did not deserve Red’s affection.

That was beside the point.

Focus.

Red was gambling.

“Hello?”

Blue blinked, crashing back down to earth. A trainer stood before him, about thirteen years old, with pink hair and a worried look on his face.

Right. He was still working. It was still the workday.

“I hope my trainers did a good job of welcoming you to the Viridian City Gym,” Blue said, not caring if his sudden animation seemed off. He really needed to update his script and customer service voice. Whatever. “My name is Blue, and I’m the strongest gym leader in all of Kanto. Once the champion, for a short period of time. Are you ready to battle?”

The boy didn’t make it past Rhydon.

Blue offered what he hoped were somewhat reassuring words of encouragement before retreating back to his office. Lance had lectured him enough times before about how gym leaders were meant to _uplift_ challengers, even when they sucked. Blue understood it. He really did.

The kind words of the leaders during his own challenge had helped to propel him forward six years ago. But… the harsh words of Giovanni did the same.

Blue hated that guy.

Plus, actually, back to the point, that made the whole Red-gambling-thing _weirder._ The only person who hated Giovanni as much as Blue was _Red,_ and it was Team Rocket that ran the Celadon Game Corner. And Bill had specifically said he saw Red at the Celadon Game Corner.

Blue groaned.

He didn’t want to deal with this. But he wouldn’t be able to _not._

**-line break-**

Red blinked.

“You’re cooking,” he said, studying the scene before him. Blue stood in the kitchen, Eevee at his heels, some kind of stir fry simmering on the stove. He seemed a bit frazzled, the way he often did when he was panicking over something completely unnecessary. Red still teased him about the time he started crying over not finding Pikachu’s favorite brand of poffins.

Red also told him to consider therapy. Blue did not.

Red also told him to consider meditating on a mountain. Blue hit him.

“Is that surprising?” Blue demanded. “I cook all the time!”

“Not on Thursdays.”

Blue paused. “What? I don’t follow a cooking schedule.”

“Yes you do. Just not on purpose.”

Blue made his standard “what the hell” face, one of Red’s favorite faces of his, before getting back to work.

“What’re you worried about?” Red asked, taking a seat at the table.

Blue froze. “What? I’m not worried about anything. I just wanted to make dinner.”

Red hummed and waited. Pikachu climbed down from his shoulder to go play with Eevee, as per usual.

“Have you been… okay?” Blue asked. “With the move back and everything?”

“I’ve been back a year. I think the move is over,” Red said.

“Right. But just, I mean, have you adjusted okay?”

“Yes?”

“You’re keeping busy? You have enough to do?”

“Yes.”

“You’re _sure?_ ”

“Believe it or not, catching and training every single species of Pokémon in Kanto and Johto takes plenty of time,” Red drawled.

“And you’re not hurting for money or anything.”

“No.”

Blue looked somehow _more_ uncomfortable and bothered. Red honestly didn’t know what other answers to give him.

“Did something happen?” Red asked.

Blue shifted. “No? I’m worried about _you._ ”

“There’s nothing to worry about.”

Blue looked ready to explode, and Red wondered if now would be a good time to bring up getting therapy again. Viridian had plenty of good therapists who would be fine handling someone with Blue’s celebrity status; he’d checked. Multiple times.

It wasn’t that Blue was crazy, really. Red just kind of worried about how stressed and overwhelmed he seemed to get about just about anything. He had a lot of trauma to unpack, and there was only so much Red could do to help him with it seeing as Red was involved in a lot of it, and there was only so much Blue wanted to tell him. Which was fine. There were things Red could never tell Blue. They both knew this.

But… Blue would probably actually freak out if Red brought up therapy right now, so probably best to wait.

“How has your Pokédex been coming along?” Blue said at last, shoulders slumping.

Red shrugged. “Pretty good.”

“Pretty good?” Blue clearly wanted more than that.

“Yeah.” Red tried to think of something else to say about it. “Kinda slow lately.”

“How so?”

“Trying to get a Porygon.” Red hummed, turning his gaze to their napkin holder. It was covered in grime. They honestly needed to clean it. “Only ones available are through the black market or the game corner.”

“The Celadon Game Corner?”

“The one and only,” Red agreed.

“Are you gambling?”

“Yes.”

Blue dumped the stir fry unceremoniously onto two plates, which he dropped onto their table. He fell into the chair across from Red, dark rings a stark contrast against his lightly tanned skin. Red wished he would just be more straightforward.

But then he wouldn’t be Blue, right?

“Just for the Porygon, though.”

“Pretty much.”

“Not… not for any other reason.”

“No?”

“You’re not… you don’t enjoy gambling?”

“No, it’s, uh, pretty boring.”

Blue’s head dropped to the table with a thud.

Red poked at his stir fry, unsure of what to do.

“I’m calling Daisy,” Blue announced, voice muffled by the table. “I’m calling Daisy and scheduling an appointment with a therapist or counsellor or whatever the hell it’s called.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Red said.

They sat in silence for a while, Red slowly eating the stir fry and Blue having an existential crisis on the table. It was good stir fry, actually. Blue was always good at cooking, even when he was having nights like this. It was one of those little things that always amazed Red about him.

It wasn’t until nine o’clock, when Red had planned to be back at the Celadon Game Corner, that Blue finally ate his food and talked.

“Bill called me and asked if you were alright. He’s been fixing some machines at the game corner every day for the past couple weeks, and he always saw you there,” Blue said at last. “I thought you had a gambling problem.”

Red stared.

“Really.”

“Yes,” Blue said, voice cracking.

Then came the laughter.

They sat at the table and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. At Red’s inability to update Blue on his life, at Blue’s inability to be upfront. At Bill, for not knowing Red and not just asking why he was there. At the Celadon Game Corner, and all its horrible memories, now transformed into a brand-new form of misery.

It was all so stupid.

So mundane.

And so _okay._

“I’m pretty exhausted,” Blue said once their chests both hurt and the remaining food was cold. “I had a challenger today. We can clean all this up in the morning.” He stood up, legs a bit shaky. “You coming to bed?”

“Of course.”

Because he wanted to sleep with Blue. Because he loved Blue, and that was the whole point.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm actually really happy with how this turned out
> 
> anyways quick psa: therapy is wonderful and life changing no matter what stage of life you're in. we all have baggage and it never hurts to have someone help you unpack and organize it.


End file.
